Locate | Navigate: exercises in mapping, curated by Charlotte Street Foundation Associate Director Kate Hackman, is a two-part exhibition project including drawings, paintings, sculpture, photography, installation-, audio-, video-, web- and performance-based work by diverse local, national, and international artists. Taking a broad definition of “map” as a starting point, the exhibitions explore the convergence of artmaking and mapmaking through the presentation of contemporary artworks that “map” specific sets of information from explicitly subjective points of view. As a whole, locate |navigate highlights widely varied, individualistic approaches to positing, investigating, and representing relationships among particular elements of interest, from places to objects, ideas, actions, and points in time. Pushing the parameters of what might be considered a map, the project further aims to encourage expansive approaches and attitudes toward exploring and examining our surroundings, and to suggest alternative methods for envisioning and depicting such terrains. Throughout is an interest in the artist’s “hand,” whether embedded in physical mark, creative process, lived experience, or field of investigation.
Locate | Navigate part 1, opening at Urban Culture Project Space on January 18, features work by Leah Beeferman (Richmond, VA), Timothy Briner (Brooklyn, NY), Joe Faus (Kansas City), Karen McCoy (Kansas City), Johnny Naugahyde (Kansas City), Garry Noland (Kansas City), Jack Rees (Kansas City), Eric von Robertson (Amsterdam, the Netherlands), Michael Schonhoff (Kansas City), Larry Thomas (Kansas City), Andrew Thompson (Detroit, MI), and Cara Walz (Kansas City). Exhibited projects range from Eric von Robertson’s “Cloudburst” and “City Guide,” encompassing hand-drawn maps, photographs, and taxidermic dog sporting knitted relief map/sweater as components of an ongoing documentation and collection of discarded umbrellas; to Joe Faus’s interactive, multi-layered map of the Crossroads area, including audio recordings and personal topographical map layered on top of a large-scale street map annotated with happenings and observations accumulated over multiple decades; to a selection of snapshots from Timothy Briner’s “Boonville” project, for which the artist is exploring small-town America by living in and documenting six different towns called Boonville across the country. Also included in this “part 1” exhibition will be a resource area including library of map-related publications and articles, computer terminal with list of on-line map-related artist projects, and “pin up” wall for visitors to make their own contributions to the exhibition.
Locate | Navigate part 2, opening at la Esquina on February 1, features work by Catherine Archias (NYC), Corrie Baldauf (Bloomfield Hills, MI), Darlene Charneco (Southampton, NY), Brian Collier (Kansas City), Matt Dehaemers (Kansas City ), Andrea Flamini (Kansas City), Jorge Garcia (Kansas City), Adriane Herman (Portland, ME), Mike Hill (Kansas City), Wopo Holup (NYC), Timothy Hutchings (NYC), Beniah Leuschke (Kansas City), Anne Lindberg (Kansas City), Justin Newhall (Minneapolis, MI), Garry Noland (Kansas City), Anne Pearce (Kansas City), Dana Sperry (Richmond, VA), VxPxC (Los Angeles, CA), James Woodfill (Kansas City), and Matt Wycoff (Brooklyn, NY). This exhibition includes several series-based and cumulative projects, such as a selection of photographs from Justin Newhall’s “Historical Markers: Along the Lewis and Clark Trail,” which, in his words, embody an “exploration of the landscape, historical sites, and makeshift roadside museums that litter the Dakotas, Montana and beyond –the no-man’s land between Western Mythology are reality;” and Matt Wycoff’s video, "Every landscape photograph my grandfather ever took," created by scanning thousands of inherited 35-mm slides of landscapes captured throughout a lifetime. Some works are products of artists’ activities and navigations in the public realm, such as Brian Collier’s “The Highway Expedition, ” including GPS maps, audio and video recordings, and 27 hand-made “trip journals” detailing the artist’s 115 mile walking exploration of the roadside habitat in the I-74 right-of-way in central Illinois; while others map cultural phenomenon, such as Mike Hill’s “History of Metal” project, which includes a hand-drawn map of the world showing the concentration of metal bands per country; and Catherine Archias’ video-still mapping of the recent 4th Amendment wiretapping case against Attorney General Gonzales.
Public Programs:
A series of public programs will complement the two exhibitions, including additional programs to be announced. Current scheduled events include:
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 6 | 6 PM MAPPING THE TOW LOT: Miki Baird, Matt Dehaemers, Dan Maginn Paragraph gallery | 23 East 12th Street | KCMO 64105
Kansas City artist Miki Baird, whose “Tow Lot Vanitas” is on view at Paragraph gallery January 18-February 9, discusses her four-month process of documenting the KCMO Municipal Tow Lot and her resulting photo-based exhibition. Baird will be joined by Dan Maginn of el dorado architects, the architect for new KCMO Vehicle Impound Facility, a 40 acre sustainably-designed development currently under construction in East Kansas City, MO; and by artist Matt Dehaemers, who is completing the One-Percent-for-Art public art commission for that project.
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 23 | 1 PM Exploring by Chance: A Walk around Downtown with Johnny Naugahyde Departs from Urban Culture Project Space | 21 East 12th Street
Kansas City artist Johnny Naugahyde, whose work is featured in Locate |Navigate (part 1), leads a walking excursion, the direction and duration of which will be determined by flips of a coin.
Wednesday, February 27 | 6 PM Andrea Polli - Breathtaking: Climate Science in Art and Media UMKC | Fine Arts Building, Room 106 | KCMO 64110
Andrea Polli is a digital media artist living in New York City, and Director of the Integrated Media Arts MFA Program at Hunter College. Polli, whose projects often bring together artists and scientists from various disciplines, currently works in collaboration with atmospheric scientists to develop systems for understanding storm and climate information through sound (a process called sonification). Recent collaborations include: Atmospherics/Weather Works, a spatialized sonification of highly detailed models of storms that devastated the New York area; Heat and the Heartbeat of the City, a series of sonifications of actual and projected climate in Central Park, the heart of New York City and one of the world’s first locations for climate monitoring; and N., a real-time multi-channel sonification and visualization of weather in the Arctic.
SATURDAY, MARCH 1, 2008 | 2 PM The Walking Guide: A Map of Selected Sites in Midtown Kansas City Departs from the H&R Block Artspace at the Kansas City Art Institute 16 East 43rd Street | KCMO 64111 | RSVP to 816.561.5563
This guided walk is offered to introduce individuals to public art sites in and around Midtown Kansas City. Inspired by the past exhibition at the Artspace, America Starts Here: Kate Ericson & Mel Ziegler, this one-day tour by Artspace staff will experience the local neighborhood on foot. Through a process of observing and discussing the social and environmental landscape, art, and architecture individuals will have the opportunity to observe these surroundings and community in new ways.
